dream

"That's not at all what the book is about."

I'm at my friend S's house. She lives on top of the mountain. She's half Japanese and recently returned from Japan with a bunch of cool stuff. One of the items she brought back was a book. I'm looking it over. Another friend, Z, asks me what the book is about. I don't really understand it all but it starts off sort of as a comic adventure and slowly turns pornographic. S asks me how much Japanese I know. I explain that I can read kana and know a smattering of kanji and have a limited, though functional vocabulary. She tells me "Oh, okay. That's not at all what the book is about. It's actually a feudal romance." I'm lying down looking at the book trying to figure out how I misunderstood it. S pulls back my eyelids to determine how high I am. I put the book down and she offers me ecstasy. I don't have any money to pay her for it and I have to drive back down the the mountain, anyway, so I decline.

"They didn't even flinch"

N is running a video store among other things. He's got some fancy old computer with a huge CRT and runs vintage role playing software. It's old but impressive for what it is. B is helping me make a character. There's a program that controls character creation. The software is somewhat hard to use but extremely capable. It's something like an early World of Warcraft. N sends B out on an errand (to get something yellow?) There’s a weird tension between them. I'm not sure if it’s because of me or if something happened before I got there. I get stuck on character creation and wait for B to get back to help me. The store is filling up with people so I try to stay out of the way. When B gets back I go out to the parking lot with her. It’s daytime. I look up at her. She’s radiant in the sun. She tells me something but I don't catch/couldn't hear/immediately forget what. I go back in the store as she leaves again to continue on her errand. I go in through the back door. It’s hot in the store so N has propped the back door open with my backpack. It's nighttime. Realizing that it's likely to get stolen, I look for something less tempting to hold open the door. I find a tall thin wicker or rattan waste basket, like one I had in my youth. As I head back to replace it, I see two stereotypical thugs take my backpack. They notice me and bolt. I run out the front of store to head them off. I throw the wicker basket at them, splitting them up. I manage to grab the one with my bag as he suddenly stops running. Grabbing him around the neck from behind in a choke hold, I look over his shoulder and realize there's a group of three cops, one unarmed, one with a pistol and one with an assault rifle. The weapons are trained on the thief. I let go and back off. The cops issue a command and I drop to the ground so as not to get shot. The thief says defiantly ”Well, I guess you’re going to have to shoot me!” He lifts his shirt, draws a gun and fires 45 degrees off target from the police, presumably in an attempt at suicide by cop. They are unfazed and get him to the ground. I realize it's someone I went to high school with. He begins insulting all of us and thrashing at me with his legs. He says something particularly insulting so I move into range of his legs and make contact with his foot. One of the cops and I say in unison “looks like you’re getting charged for assault, too.” He's really angry now, mule kicking from his back with his hands in handcuffs. I go back into the store. A customer in the back near a shelf asks me what happened. I tell him the story. I tell him that when he drew on the police “they didn’t even flinch.”

"I'll see you in court!"

I’m in the pet department of a store with my backpack. I’m trying to avoid one of the employees an isle over while acting inconspicuous. I head to the isle he is in and looking over a low palette of fish tanks I no longer see him. Looking around, I can see out of the corner of my eye that he has gone down an adjoining isle and is now behind me. I take note of a four legged fish, approximately the size of a monitor lizard with a combined shape of a lizard, fish and small dog. It’s striped like a zebra and has brightly colored fringe around it’s gills, running from the top of its head down its back, and on its elbows and the back of its knees. I continue to try to remain inconspicuous as I leave the area into the rest of the store. Outside I’m with a group of friends who are trying to buy some weed. It turns out to be a police sting. I know I don’t have anything on me so I’m not particularly worried, but I duck behind a car just to double check that I haven’t inadvertently left something in my backpack. Going through it I find a crown royal bag that has a small container about the size of lip balm in it. Just as I discover it I realize the cops have taken notice of me and ditch it just in case. One of them goes through my backpack and pulls out my check book. In the check book I’ve written in chalk some notes about buying from Corsair and the price. He takes this to be information of a drug deal despite my attempts to explain that Corsair is a brand of RAM. The guy is being a huge dick. I begin to argue with him and mouth off “Fuck you, I’ll see you in court.” I make a joke to my friend, L, who's a really big dude, about how maybe we should just kick their asses and get out of there. The joke is particularly funny because the cop dealing with him is about twice L's size. The cop is black and his teeth are small and widely spaced, like a puppy's. The big cop says “huh?” so I ask him if it’s okay for me to be extremely candid before I tell him the joke.

Fishtanks

I'm in a courtyard. There are ponds and fish tanks. My dog, Z. has dug space around and under a pond that's approximately the size, shape and depth of a bathtub, so that she can get under it. The water, though suspended by nothing, keeps its shape. Z. wriggles under it without disturbing it or getting wet. The water is a milky blue. We're standing next to one of the fish tanks. I take a sip of the salty water from the corner of the tank. A friend is waiting to hear whether the fish in it is sick so he can eat it. There are several sandwich baggies of cocaine in a long, shallow, translucent piece of tupperware. It's reportedly of low quality. Inside a hallway lined with walnut panels we're looking through the open door to the restroom. At textured, amber colored glass window sits half way up and runs the length of the room. A woman tells me how young I still am and to "Just ask A."

"Met Corner"

We're at the parking structure behind the office. S. is dressed up like Jean Luc Picard in his leisure wear. She's introducing someone to town. She tells him the parking structure is called "Met Corner." We scoff at the made up name. "She didn't even call it Robot or TARDIS corner" we remark. I have a mosquito bite on the inside of my bicep. It's large and misshapen. It looks somewhat like an over ripe strawberry or the tip of a tongue.

"Why would you do that?"

It's the zombie apocalypse. I've found a hatchet and strap it to my chest. It feels right. C., G.C. and their friends pick me up outside in a white sedan. They're tripping really hard and dose me. We speed through the streets. I lean out the window and yell "I'm sorry!" to all the zombies we pass. C. thinks it's super funny. We get to a warehouse and clear out the zombies. I realize the short reach of a hatchet makes it kind of a crummy choice. C. is compelled to eat part of one of the corpses, a black and green organ about the size of a mouse. There were kid zombies and we're all upset, mad and sorrowful. Soon C. vomits gallons of liquid until the organ comes out. She's compelled to eat it again. I ask "Why would you do that?"

I walk through a dark, damp, gray hallway full of cobwebs. It's a short hallway but I've been walking down it for a long time. Sometimes people join me but then they're able to walk faster ahead of me and leave. I can see the exit I just can't reach it. I think it continues underground because the end isn't particularly bright. I don't mind that I'm in the hallway—the spiders don't scare me and I do prefer things to be darker. I'm just bored, I want to leave to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I walked down a long, white, carpeted hallway away from the olympic-sized swimming pool. As I passed the last window with a view of the pool room, I thought back to a few minutes earlier. I had just seen my friend Dylan, he told me he was living in the pool. I wasn't surprised, he basically lived in the pool in high school (he was on the swim team). Before you know it, I thought, he'll be growing fins.

Now I was on my way to visit my new neighbors. I had just moved to this rec-center-like-building. Earlier that day, I ran into them in the hall outside my door. They were an elderly couple; nice to me but always bickering. When I arrived I knocked loudly so they would hear me. A few moments after a muffled yell, the male counterpart opened the door.

Their apartment walls were white like the hallways. Though it was windowless, the room was bright because of their supplied décor. The interior was vibrant and bright. Upon entering, their very large and eager dog bounded over and inspected me to check if I was the type of person who pets dogs. I looked down and pet its smooth head.

Its body was made of black, overstuffed pillows with string tassels stacked one on top of the other. The head was one square, medium sized pillow, the body three large, rounded pillows, and each leg a dozen tiny, rounded pillows and so on. Its beady eyes looked me over and its pink tongue slipped out as it began to pant.

I followed my neighbor as he slowly brought me to the living room. I sat down on some bright, comfortable cushions and the dog laid down next to me, resting its head on my lap. The female counterpart brought me tea and asked if I thought I would be able to care for the dog while they go away on vacation soon.

I said yes and continued to chat with them. Eventually they left for their vacation and I remained, happily petting the pillow pup.

The only thing I hear is my spurs jingling with each slow step down a wide, dirt street and the surrounding buildings moaning in the gentle, desert, spring wind. Everything is bright and pale but I can only focus on one thing: my foe. Their hand lays resting on their weapon holster as they look at me between the small gap between their bandana and their large hat.

I talk with an edge in my voice, “You don't wanna do that, son. Not here. Not in my town.” I spit to the side so they know what I really think of them.

Their eyes narrow and the top of the bandana raised as if they are smiling.

I lay my hand on my holster and narrow my eyes in response.

To the untrained eye, we pull our weapons and throw them at the same time, but I am skilled. There's no being as good as me in the entire region. I dodge their banana by jumping far to my right but I hit them so square and hard in the face they fall down. More fruit starts flying out of the buildings on either side of us.

I jump into a horse water trough to get out of the line of fire. I hold my breath for as long as I can. When I come up and shake the water off of my head I see the rapscallion just escaping the pile of fruit they were under and running out of town.

“It won't be the last we see of this fool,” I say to myself as I wake up.

I observe a hunting accident in which a canoe, floating sideways down rough, cold rapids becomes entangled in the antlers of a swimming caribou. Canoe and caribou float attached for a distance. The caribou is finally able to escape when it becomes a snow-white juvenile. He swims to shore and gallops away down the hill.